Quote Originally Posted by Stevely View Post
"Experts" and the therapeutic culture are a curse on our society that is universal, not just within the military. I think it is only to be expected - we are a crazy society that is working furiously cut itself loose from every last mooring in traditional culture, for the sake of "progress", including all those means that human cultures and societies have developed over the millenia to cope with the vicissitudes of life. These experts and their schemes are the result of trying to replace the natural with the unnatural product of ideologies. The society no longer has deep cultural and spiritual resources to fall back on, and thus no longer understands what you've gone through - no longer understands, really, the human condition - and won't admit and can't imagine that anyone else can, thus you and your comrades are subject to this mad, clueless flailing by mental health professionals, grief counselors, and the rest of the lot. It will only get worse. This is the terminus of a highly abstract culture - it can no longer not only tell truth from falsehood, it no longer even has the vocabulary for it.
Having seen a great many people whose lives have been transformed for the better (and, for that matter, lives have been saved) by dedicated mental health professionals, I have to say this picture bears absolutely no resemblance to the society I know.

I don't think that slagging off mental health workers en masse is either appropriate or very useful.

Having said that, I'll leave it there. I don't that SWJ is a particularly appropriate place to fight out culture wars.